Posts tagged with 'meteor'

Deiland is a fantastic game. Think 3D Harvest Moon in space, or a more timely analogy, Stardew Valley in space. Though, not as complex or farm-focused as these titles, Deiland takes a more streamlined and narrative approach to the farming sandbox genre. An extremely charming and interesting game unfolds as you perform your typical farming/crafting tasks.

The basics of the game are pretty easy to grasp. You have three plots of land to plant food. You plant trees to cut them down and gather wood. You hit rocks and get stones. You use these resources to build. Where it gets interesting is that there is actually not that much to worry about when it comes to how to build your farm, or what things to plant, or where to put things. You can certainly pay attention to those things, but the way the game treats them is much more in the guise of “accomplish these quests/tasks” rather than the “customize it and make it look good” thing that most titles in this genre emphasize.

There is a greater sense of purpose in doing the “normal sandbox tasks” that you see yourself doing. You’ll meet around ten different visitors/friends to do quests for, making you figure out how to use the tools you have been given in pursuit of completing them. Nearly every quest teaches you a new item to craft, and as you gather more materials, you’ll learn more about the visitors themselves. Since they actually “visit” your planet at random times, they can also overlap, which allows them to interact with one another; this gives the little planet of Deiland a much more communal feel to it. You’ll also visit a couple of different locations off the planet, such as another planet called Ankora, so it gives the game a bigger feeling; though you’ll feel homesick for the quaint life of farming carrots in short order.

By far the most unique aspect is the planet of Deiland itself. Your entire planet is your “farm.” The planet is also very small and you can run around it in less than a minute. You have all of your normal sandbox features, such as a mine, plots of land to plant food in, and a lake to fish in. There’s plenty of empty space to plant as many trees/bushes as you like. Your house is upgraded to include more types of items to craft, along with upgrading your tools. All of the upgrading and new crafting items occur through the story, so as you progress through quests, your planet will develop further. Meteorites will hit the planet as well, creating a mini-game where you have to rotate your planet so that the meteorites don’t hit anything valuable, or they will get destroyed. When it rains you can also rotate your planet or the clouds themselves over your plants to make them produce faster.

A much appreciated quality of life inclusion is contextual actions. For example, if you go over to a tree, you will immediately use your axe to cut it; same with stones, you will immediately use your hammer to hit them. There is much less fumbling around with selecting tools than in Stardew Valley, and for this reason alone I generally enjoy playing Deiland more, which is a pretty big compliment. Why this wasn’t an obvious design choice in other games, I can’t answer, but I really do like it.

While most of the quests can be completed by creating something on your farm, you can also buy your way through many of the quests by trading with the different visitors. Each visitor will buy particular things at a higher price, so it is good to wait to sell certain things until you visit a particular character. The characters themselves are all interesting in their own way, and about half of them don’t actually have models — they are just character art hiding inside of their spaceship or a building. This isn’t a big deal for me, but it would have been nice to see all of them have their own models and give more personality to the characters you befriend.

The mystery of the player’s character, Arco, is slowly unfurled as you progress through the storyline. You find several pages of the Prince’s “story” which alludes to the main villain. The story is a bit dark, with an unknown entity communicating to Arco through his dreams, saying creepy things. You also learn about previous “Princes” and the fact that your best friend, Mun, may have ulterior motives. It took about 10 hours for me to complete the main story, but unfortunately the ending is a bit sudden and you don’t expect it to be the end. Supposedly, there is free DLC planned for December, which gives at least some hope that the story is planned on being concluded in a satisfying way.

As far as the bad things about the game, there isn’t too many, but there is some obviously underdeveloped aspects. It would have been nice to have a couple more buildings to build on your planet. After upgrading your house and building the barn there isn’t very much to invest your most common resources, Wood and Stone, into. The fighting system is also pretty barebones, as your character basically only has one attack animation. Having to kill enemies feels more like a chore than something fun. Additionally, a few substantial ability unlocks occur at the end of the game, at which point you’re pretty much done playing, so new magic spells, for instance, have very low use. For some reason you’re also not allowed to even use magic in the “boss stage” which doesn’t make much sense. If you aren’t going to use it then, when would you want to use it? Not that this is required, but there isn’t any sort of “endless dungeon” or meaningful combat progression system, so there’s not as much emphasis on the combat aspects despite being something you have to do a lot.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the game’s story conclude with whatever free DLC is being planned. While I’m not a fan of releasing unfinished games, Deiland is far from being unfinished — there’s plenty to do and I had a lot of fun for the time I put into it. It would have been nice to at least know that something more was coming immediately rather than having to research online about it.

It’s often that I’ll play random games and discover that I like them or hate them. It’s quite another experience to play a game that brings the question of “why does this exist?” Keeplanet is more of a game that confuses me more than anything else. I don’t hate it and I certainly don’t like it, but mostly I just don’t “get” it. There’s some sort of design philosophy to this title, but the end goal didn’t seem to be “fun.”

Keeplanet‘s concept rides on the principal of “balance.” You are the “World Commander” of a set of planets in a solar system, your role being to develop the new home for humanity after Earth got blowed up. Your goal is develop your world by placing objects on the outer rim of the planet and keep the balance of all of the objects such that the world keeps spinning and isn’t dragged down by being too heavy on one side. You can balance the world on the fly by placing more objects down and hoping you are “calculating” correctly before your world’s inhabitants are killed off from the lack of rotation. Gravity seems to have taken a vacation from the rules of physics, but there’s stranger things happening in quantum mechanics so anything is possible, I suppose.

There’s nothing that’s inherently fun about the concept of randomly placing objects on the extreme edges of a planet, though. Not only is it a pain to actually see where you’re placing things, but the planet will get “bigger” as more objects are placed and you put down even more objects between those objects. Some levels require putting down a hundred or more of these “objects” so you’ll really have to be paying attention to what the hell is going on. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t really provide you with the tools or information to help you in this manner. There is a weight scale that defines the weight of the planet’s “left” and “right” (whatever that means) and as the world rotates on its axis and more objects are built, these numbers change constantly. The goal is to keep these numbers as balanced as possible and the world will rotate. If it stops rotating, then your population will start dying out from heat and cold and once it reaches zero, it’s game over.

The user interface leaves a lot to be desired. There’s a large “Play” button on the menu screen that you only use one time, but stays there after you click it. Selecting your level beckons you to click a WORD that says “Play” not the big Play button that becomes a quick way to close the entire menu and put you back to the Title Screen. Like, why the hell do I need to go back to the Title Screen at that point? Just hide the Play button or use it as the level selection.

The information provided regarding objects is basically nonsensical and I just don’t care about the numbers when I have to plop down 300 objects quickly — otherwise I’d be here for 30 minutes for one of these levels and that ain’t happening. Of course, I die over and over regardless, so I’m stuck playing that long anyway! I also really don’t get why the outer edges of the planet are the only thing being used; when the planet becomes bigger it becomes impossible to see all parts of the planet without zooming out, which makes the objects you are placing much smaller. Where’s the joy in placing some stupid ass mountain on a planet if I can’t see it???? Or those dumb trees, for that matter. There’s no agency here where I can pick which objects I want to place and create a strategy to overcome the task at hand — it’s more of a Tetris with objects being served to you and you dealing with it. So, some World Commander you are. Who is building these unwanted mountains for you? Why not some big speakers that play Spanish music to liven up the place? There’s also a big wasted space in the center of the planet which I feel could have been used for the user interface information in a more creative way, but instead the UI elements get in the way of the game play, and you mostly just stare at blank space on your screen. The graphics are generally inoffensive, otherwise. The sound isn’t that annoying, but there’s a siren that will go off when your population is dying, which can be a bit annoying.

The only real positive aspect of this game is that it is really cheap. It is currently $1.99 on Steam at full price, so you can probably get it with some Steam balance and check it out if it interests you. There are probably about twenty levels including the “Challenges.” It’s not particularly impressive, but it works and you can play it.

I don’t really understand why the title of the game is “Keeplanet,” but it probably goes along with the translation errors that can be picked out in the text. Maybe it’s as simple as “Keep your planet alive. Keep. Planet. Keeplanet.” ::facepalm::

When it comes to the store’s page, it’s almost comical how weirdly it is worded at points. Two quotes from the Store page and my analysis:

Develop the planet In Keeplanet, you create your own history – there’s no right or wrong way to play! Become a world’s landlord, spread out trees, mountains, houses and other objects to make the planet rotate around its axis. Remember, the most important thing is not to let the planet stop. Otherwise, all inhabitants of the planet will die out from sunburn or freezing.

Except there is a right or wrong way to play. You get game overs when you don’t play the right way! It says it right in the same paragraph that if you let the planet stop you lose, that’s the definition of having a wrong way to play!

Fight for the humanity Universe is a dangerous place, protect people from external hazards – meteorites, meteor rains and vigilant aliens are waiting for your mistakes. Don’t let them break you!

Fighting for “the” humanity = fighting for our morals?

External hazards from outside of the universe?

The vigilant aliens just ram your planet, similar to meteors. Meteorites are also meteors that have hit the Earth, so are meteors that hit Earth, flying off of Earth across the universe and then hitting your new planet? What a bunch of assholes.

The same sort of thing happens with the in-game text, but there isn’t nearly as much writing, so there’s less to fuck up. Some of the English is so broken, they are just words on screen with no association to each other.

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Uptaoloa – n. an infectious disease that if you like a boy band, you automattically have the annoying urge to scream, like a meteor was coming right at your face to be blown off. The screams made from this disease, express the pain these people are torturing from and is by far the highest frequency of sound we can hear up to our evolutionary level as of the year 2000.